Congratulations

Back in 2000, we remember seismic waves from the news that Amadeus was going to acquire Vacation.com, then the largest consortium of leisure agents in the country.

The world's thumbs had not yet turned OMG into a universal token of surprise, but it sums up how the industry reacted at the time. Among other things, we saw traditional relationships in distribution breaking down. There was talk that if a GDS "owned" its customers, there would be ... well, bad stuff. Stuff like conflicts of interest, and favoritism, and other -isms.

Turns out that there weren't any -isms, and there wasn't much stuff. After about a decade, Amadeus sold the asset to Travel Leaders Group. Nobody died.

We recalled these events upon hearing the news that the Outside Sales Support Network is being acquired by CCRA, a major provider of services to travel agents.

There will be no OMG this time. The idea of a service provider acquiring an association of its customers may have sparked some commentary 14 years ago, but our first reaction to this transaction was simply, "Congratulations, guys. Good luck."